


Shopping With Mothman

by GenerallyHuxurious (GallifreyanOmnishambles)



Series: Kylux Cryptids AU [24]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: #LetKyloRenGetAPenisTattoo2k17, Alternate Universe - Ghost Hunters, Baby Cryptids, Celtic Mythology & Folklore, Comedy, Cryptozoology, Flirting, Franz Kafka References, Interspecies Awkwardness, Interspecies Relationship(s), M/M, Magic, Marriage, Mothman is Gay, Mr Blobby Reference, Mythology - Freeform, Nude Photos, Paranormal Investigators, Partial Nudity, Poorly Executed Magic, Rosy Maple Moth, Shopping, Sidhe, Telepathy, That's Not How The Force Works, chapstick abuse, discussion of genitalia, sporting goods store
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-13
Updated: 2017-06-13
Packaged: 2018-11-13 15:57:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,137
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11188482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GallifreyanOmnishambles/pseuds/GenerallyHuxurious
Summary: Kylo Ren needs some retail therapy. Hux really isn't sure the 'retail' part is necessary, though he's pretty certain he'll need therapy himself if this day gets any weirder.





	Shopping With Mothman

**Author's Note:**

  * For [darcydent](https://archiveofourown.org/users/darcydent/gifts).



> Inspired by the [Tumblr post](http://irl-star.tumblr.com/post/156821014315/mothman-is-real-he-asked-me-for-chapstick-in-an)\- "mothman is real he asked me for chapstick in an overly air-conditioned adidas store"
> 
> HAPPY BIRTHDAY DARCY!

Hux eyed the store warily, trying not to feel like he was walking into some kind of trap. Half concealed by a rack of overpriced clothes a salesperson gave him much the same look.

This was not his kind of store. 

It wasn’t a case of not being good at sports, or not being interested in exercise. He’d played rugby for the school team; he’d ridden polo ponies a little badly; and he’d always kept up with the physical health requirements of the Army. But this, this wasn’t the sort of place he would ever have visited to shop for sports clothing, even back in the days when he still had his original knees. 

He wasn’t entirely sure that  _ anyone _ who bought clothing here actually intended to play sports in it. 

Hux had always been very much of the opinion that beyond suitable shoes- and any necessary uniforms- sportswear should be cheap, utilitarian, and destructible. He came from a family with a country seat and a heraldic title- that didn’t mean he came from money. Quite the opposite, he’d come from thrift out of necessity. The fact that he had access to a trust fund now didn’t change the habits of thirty years.

In the Army you wore the right kit for the job at hand. Hux couldn’t think of a sport that genuinely required a hundred dollar polo shirt. Or a two hundred dollar hoodie. Or… he peered at the shoe display and felt his face flush. Those were prices he didn’t particularly wish to think about. 

So he wouldn’t have ever shopped here in the prime of his sporting days, and now he was standing awkwardly at Kylo’s side in tweed trousers leaning heavily on his cane. He stood out like a flamingo in a duck pond. No wonder the salesperson was glaring at him. 

Kylo on the other hand was a ‘fortunate son’. Even though he had suffered, and had mostly rejected the familial ties, he’d still grown up with more money than Hux could easily imagine. They also had very different tastes. 

He wouldn’t have thought, before he became intimately acquainted with the contents of Kylo’s wardrobes, that the man wore many mainstream brands. 

Kylo certainly wore a lot of obscure European imports and Hot Topic dross, and he craved Japanese brands that would never fit his massively oversized frame in a million years. But if anyone had told Hux when they first met that the stretched all to hell muscle tank tops Kylo habitually wore cost sixty dollars each he’d have laughed until he passed out. 

But sixty dollar tanks they were. Hux had promised himself never to look at the price tags on the horrible neon compression leggings Kylo wore for weight training. He had a feeling the shock might kill him.

So here they stood, in an Adidas outlet store in fucking Tuscon of all place, getting the evil eye from the staff while Kylo sought to complete a personal mission that had been consuming his retail soul for the last seven states. 

Apparently he needed a specific shirt. Hux had never seen this shirt but it was, allegedly, amazing. And perfect. And various other non-specific adjectives that told Hux absolutely nothing about its appearance. Kylo said he’d seen it in Lafayette in the wrong size but he absolutely had to have it.

Hux wasn’t sure he’d ever felt that determined about an article of clothing in his life, but- for reasons he still didn’t understand even after four years- he was willing to tolerate the insanity.

At 6’3” and gifted with additional perception beyond normal ken Kylo had a habit of shopping in a way that made him look exactly like a giant emo meerkat. There was none of the long slow hunting down aisles for Kylo Ren. No, he just turned slowly on his tiptoes at the centre of the store, his gaze fixed on the horizon while Hux quietly prayed that they go unnoticed. It was embarrassing to think he let this man take him home every night.

“Ah ha!!” And with that Kylo was away, bounding across the store in search of gods knew what.

He would have preferred to stare where he was and rest his aching legs, but the salesperson was edging closer to him now and…

“Argh! Fuck off Kyle-o, you great bastard, that’s mine!”

Oh, fantastic. Just what his day needed. 

“Have you paid for it? No. Was it in your hand? No. You were eight feet away from it, Aed! That hoodie is mine.” Kylo wasn’t shouting but he’d pitched his voice to be instinctively obeyed. It only worked about 40% of the time. Given that a small man with the massive swan tattoo wrapped over his shoulder was kicking Kylo vigorously in the shins it hadn’t worked this time either. 

“You can get fucked!” There was an Irish lilt to the voice that was far stronger than Donal or his father’s own, though it had blended with something like a Minnesota accent to become the least threatening thing he’d ever heard. 

“I really don’t want to imagine what item of clothing you two could possibly be fighting over that could actually fit you both,” Hux said in what he hoped was a reconciliatory tone, though as usual it mostly came out as mocking. 

“He’s got a point,” said… an entirely normal man with no distinguishing features of any kind. 

Hux blinked. That was weird. 

Normal, in his experience at least, was a thing that didn’t exist. Most humans went through life either painfully aware that they were different, or utterly oblivious to the things that made them odd. You’d have a conversation with them and then they’d suddenly reveal that that sorted their mail by colour, or had named their wisdom teeth, or thought that the African continent only existed in history.  

Normal was subjective and he’d never met anyone he would have categorised as normal. He stared hard at the man, who shifted uncomfortably. 

Or at least Hux thought he did. He certainly received the information ‘the entirely normal man shifted uncomfortably’ in his brain, but he had no perception of what that looked like. 

He was looking directly at this entity and seeing MAN like a placeholder in the world.

“It’s an extra small!” ‘Aed’ protested, tugging the indistinct black object around to point at a label.

“Rude  _ and _ you can’t read!” Kylo countered, twisting the fabric to reveal a second white slip. “See, it an extra large!!”

Hux looked away from the strange figure towards the two bickering men. “There’s a coathanger stuck in it. You’ve got two tangled together.” The ‘you eejits’ at the end was silent, but heavily implied. 

There was a lot of swearing and very little eye contact as the whatever-they-were were separated out and the correct size placed in the hands of the relevant person. Like competent adults, rather than emotionally stunted man-children, they both immediately bolted to opposite ends of the store. 

Since Hux was already standing by the dressing rooms he elected to stay where he was. It was entirely coincidental that Mr Norm A. L. Man also happened to be continuing to loiter under the slight shade of a broken lightbulb a few feet away.

He seemed to be with the small man Kylo had called Aed (though whether that was his name or an unfamiliar insult Hux couldn’t be sure) because Aed kept holding items up for inspection and receiving APPROVAL or DISINTEREST in return. 

It was  _ maddening _ . He wasn’t shaking his head or nodding or anything. In fact Hux couldn’t be sure he had a head because there was no specific information about it entering his brain. It was like suddenly going from watching a movie to reading a script and then back again.

Of course he couldn’t just turn around and demand ‘what the fuck are you?’ no matter how much he wanted to do so with all his soul. That would be far too rude, even for him. The possibly-a-man hadn’t done anything yet other than annoy the snot out of him.

“So, uh… how do you know Kylo?” Now that Hux was paying attention the words didn’t really sound like human speech. More like a clicking and squeaking that was arranged to sound a bit like a voice. Weirdly it reminded Hux of nothing so much as the guitar effects on  _ Frampton Comes Alive _ . He hated that damn album. 

“Kylo? He’s my husband.”

“Oh shit, really?!” Aed was back and standing between them with a frankly staggering amount of clothes. 

Hux wasn’t sure what the man was trying to imply but he wasn’t impressed by the tone. “Yes. Really.” 

Unexpectedly Ade turned on the probably-not-a-man and said accusingly, “Even bloody Kyle-O’s married!!” 

He flounced off into a cubicle before any response could be given. Hux received an impression of SHEEPISH from the being next to him and finally snapped.

“Can you stop… doing whatever the hell it is you’re doing?” He hissed, hoping to be quiet enough not to attract the attention of the salesperson again.

“What?!” Kylo asked indignantly.

“Oh, not you.”

“Makes a change.”

“I know, I’m surprised myself.”

Kylo had a slightly more sensible collection of clothes as he headed into the dressing room, though Hux didn’t expect him to be any quicker. Every item would need at least a dozen selfies before he could possibly decide to buy it. 

“Do you have any chapstick?” The bizarre amalgam voice asked.

Hux was already reaching for his pocket as he fell into that oh-so-British quandary of wanting be polite by sharing an item he had at hand but not wanting to share something that would be going anywhere near his damn mouth.

Suddenly he remembered one of Kylo’s complaints when they’d been talking about the poor manners of various cryptozoological entities. ‘Mothman always wants to borrow my chapstick but I never get it back. I’m not sure if he eats it or if he just doesn’t have pockets.’

The thing under the broken light wavered when Hux looked at it with the thought ‘Mothman’ at the forefront of his mind. Absolutely normal human being was briefly replaced with something fuzzy with wings that brushed the ceiling. 

Hux had seen stranger things in his lifetime than a humanoid moth with a ten foot wingspan. But on the other hand, the fact that it was banana yellow with deep pink markings might well be the funniest thing Hux had ever witnessed. 

No wonder it was wearing a glamour. Well, most Adidas retail outlets might have been hesitant to admit _ any _ kind of humanoid insect, really. But still… pink and yellow. 

Somehow the hellish image of that 90s British TV character ‘Mr Blobby’ bounced its way across his brain and rekindled a thousand childhood nightmares.

Kylo laughed inside his cubicle. He must have projected the image hard in an effort to push it out of his consciousness. Urgh. Not a thing he’d ever wanted to remember. 

He handed over his chapstick without a word, noting how he received no information from the glamour once the item vanished into a hand that his skin registered as ‘fluffy’. 

“Thanks.”

Waiting outside the changing rooms was always dull, and this place had nothing interesting enough to tempt him to browse through it. He wished they had seats at least, standing today was making his knees ache.

After what felt like hours of silence- but was probably only about thirty seconds - Hux gave into his curiosity and reached for his phone.

It took him a single search term to find it.  _ Dryocampa Rubicunda, _ or the rosy maple moth. Pink limbs and chest, yellow body, striped wings. He glanced to the side and watched the glamour flicker. Yep. That was the one.

Mothman was Canadian. Who knew? That was definitely a piece of information to keep to himself. He did not need to be sued by an angry tourist board again. Sometimes accuracy was less important than economics. 

“How did you do it?”

Hux almost dropped his phone out of guilt. He really shouldn’t be googling people right in front of them, it was terribly rude. 

“What?” That was rude too. Clearly he was having a rude day.

“How did you get married?”

“Uh, the usual way?” Hux was confused. Maybe it was the effects of being close to the glamour. “Look, do you have a name? You know, instead of just ‘Mothman’? Because it’s kinda hard to look at you with all that,” He waved a hand at the wavering disguise, “all that going on.”

There was a strong impression of SULLEN and then the buzzing muttered, “Gregor.”

Hux blinked hard and bit his tongue to hold back the ‘oh my god really?!’ that desperately wanted to pop out to embarrass him. 

The name was enough to dissolve the glamour in his mind, and he instantly felt guilty when he saw the poor thing’s face. Hux couldn’t imagine that many people made Kafka jokes but if there was any community in the world that would have read  _ The Metamorphosis _ it was theirs.

“Nice to met you Gregor, I’m Donal Hux, though you can call me whichever one is easier for you to say.” He said, holding out his hand and hoping his expression didn’t change when the very fluffy pink claw was placed into it. “I take it you already know Kylo then?”

Gregor shook his hand with firm enthusiasm. He was clearly happy to be treated with anything like acceptance. 

There were cliques in the cryptid world just like anywhere else, and a person who so closely walked the line between humanoid and animalistic would probably get shit from all sides. 

“Everyone knows Kylo.”

Hux shrugged. “True, but after four years I’d have thought they knew me too.”

“We’ve been, uh, off the grid for a while. You know how it is with kids.” 

It was always a challenge to his manners to look at photos of other people’s kids at the best of times, but when they looked exactly like the title character of  _ The Very Hungry Caterpillar _ Hux was doubly grateful that Mothman stopped at just the one picture. 

There had been four identical green and red larvae roughly the size of Hux’ arm asleep on Aed’s chest. It looked like a still from a low budget 80s creature feature.

Hux managed a noncommittal ‘awww cute’ and prayed to any god that would listen that he wouldn’t be quizzed on it any further.

“They finally cocooned last month so we have a couple of years peace before they pupate.” Gregor continued, apparently oblivious to Hux’ mildly horrified stare. “So I said we could take a road trip, but now that gay marriage is legal Aed wants to make us official. How did you do it without ID?”

“What? Just because I’m British doesn’t mean I don’t have ID. We have passports you know!”

“No, I meant for Kylo. You know… not being human?”

He couldn’t help it. He just couldn’t. He laughed so hard he ended up folded over his cane gasping for breath.

“Kylo’s human!”

“No way!”

Just then Hux’ phone chimed to alert him to the arrival of a photo message.

**BeautifulPrick:** How’s THIS for human?!

Hux felt himself flush scarlet as he covered his face with his phone. Hopefully Gregor hadn’t caught sight of the dressing room mirror selfie Kylo had apparently sent in defence of his humanity.

Kylo was, apart from the ugliest hoodie Hux had ever seen in his life, nude. And erect. Very erect. The hoodie was black mesh with a solid fabric pocket at the front, so Kylo had pulled that up to show off his abs, and the pink line of his unnecessarily large cock. Hux could still see where Kylo had written #LetKyloRenGetAPenisTattoo2k17 on the underside in Sharpie. It was apparently their most popular Instagram tag. 

“Oh do you have a larva too?! I’ve never seen a human one before.”

He was going to die. He’d never heard of anyone genuinely dying with laughter but godfuckingdamn it Hux was going to be the first.

Over the choking-laughing-gasping sounds from his own mouth Hux distantly heard an offended ‘HEY!’ from the changing room. 

“What? It’s very cute!”

Hux couldn’t make a noise, he could barely even breathe.

He was blessedly saved from any further conversation by the salesperson finally getting annoyed enough to throw him out of the store. 

So he sat on the hood of the Fury, enjoying the sun and wiping tears of mirth from his eyes. Poor Kylo’s cock, mistaken for first an eel and now a larva. Perhaps he  _ should _ let him get a tattoo. ‘100% HUMAN’ might be a good option. He started giggling again at the image.

“Sorry about my partner,” Aed said unexpectedly from the passenger side of the car. 

“No worries, mate, he’s not as bad as mine.” Hux shrugged.

“I still can’t believe Kylo is human though,” Aed continued. He seemed to want to ask something but didn’t know how to get around to it. That was always the hardest part of this community- knowing how much to reveal to whom. You could never assume prior knowledge of anything, or how even the strangest person might react to new information.

“Me neither some days. I take you’re… not?” Smooth. Perhaps Hux should have stayed in bed today. 

“I heard you say you’re British but you feel like one of my people.”

The phrasing had a certain ring to it that triggered the index cards of Hux’ memory to throw something up. Swan tattoo, Irish accent, Aed… Aed… 

“Are you one of the Daoine Sidhe?”

Aed nodded. A fae prince who’d been cursed to live as a swan had somehow had kids with a giant technicolour insect he now hoped to marry. Well, it was 2017. Anything could happen.

If these two wanted to be married then Hux couldn’t see any reason why they shouldn’t. But as Gregor had said, cryptids and immortal godtypes didn’t generally have ID. Few civil offices accepted grainy instax camera footage or ancient carved standing stones as proof of address. 

“You know…” He said slowly, “Kylo is an ordained minister in… fuck knows what religion actually, I’ve never dared to ask, but if you don’t mind getting married in another jurisdiction we might be able to help. It just depends on, well, politics.”

That seemed to kindle a light in Aed’s eyes that Hux really didn’t want to extinguish later on by letting him down. It was never a good idea to disappoint the fae.

“It’s uh… quite a distant jurisdiction, but I know a clerk in NYC who’ll accept marriage certificates from there as sufficient proof for a New York wedding.”

“So we’d get to be married twice?!” 

“I can’t promise anything concrete until I’ve spoken to some people, well entities, but yeah, in theory you’d be getting married twice.” Hux said in what he hoped was a soothing tone that wouldn’t get him cursed six ways from sunday. “There isn’t a feud or anything between the Daoine Sidhe and the Unseelie Court at the moment, is there?”

Ade shrugged and the swan tattoo shifted as if it was making a noncommittal gesture of its own. “No more so than usual.”

Good. Jareth owed Hux a few favours after he’d put together a training plan for the woefully incompetent goblin army, he wouldn’t mind repaying him in the form of a party. Fae love parties. Jareth most of all.

“In that case I know a member of the Unseelie who might let you use their castle. Just don’t plan to bring your kids. You might not get them back.” 

“You’d really help us like that? Why?”

“Why not?” Hux asked, taking his own turn to shrug. “We make our money writing about ghosts and cryptids these days. We won’t ever identify you, but we might find the seed of a story somewhere in this. And if not, well, it’s the right thing to do isn’t it?”

At that Aed gave a grateful smile. “Thank you. I’ll talk to Greg and call Kylo to set something up then.” He held a hand out for Hux to shake.

The hand felt much thinner than it looked, and more than a little scaly. 

“You should put as much effort into his glamour as you do your own,” Hux suggested gently, “you don’t want him to get a reputation for causing migraines.”

“I’ll stop my boyfriend giving people headaches when you stop yours!”

An impossible task. Hux could only laugh while he watched Aed hurry back to the figure waiting hunched under a golf umbrella. 

It didn’t cover his wings in the slightest but no one else would notice. They’d just see a Normal Human with his tiny boyfriend walking around under a massive umbrella in the middle of a sunny day. Okay, so maybe some people would notice that. 

But as luck would have it Kylo was finally making his way out of the store, and there was no way anyone would notice anything else now. 

Even if Mothman’s glamour failed completely. 

A man sized fluffy yellow and pink moth had nothing on Kylo Ren today.

Kylo had apparently decided to wear some of his purchases instead of getting changed. The mesh hoodie remained, revealing his muscles and tattoos to the world, while the skin tight bright blue shorts revealed that he still hadn’t dealt with his erection. 

It was, frankly, obscene. Mouthwateringly so. But Hux couldn’t tell him that. It’d only feed his already insufferable ego.

“You look like the Spanish fishing fleet accidentally trawled the last gay bar in Atlantis.” There, that should do it. 

Kylo grinned as he crowded close to Hux, “You love it really.”

“I wouldn’t throw you back,” Hux replied a little noncommittally.

“Good. Atlantis sucks. Speaking of sucking...”

“Oh for fucks sake.”

“And that too.”

Hux sighed. Kylo  _ had _ completed his mission for questionable fashion at last, and Hux had a new project to research. They would be justified in calling it a day.

“We  _ are _ here to investigate the haunted hotel,” Kylo prompted. He was nuzzling Donal’s neck now, all new clothes scent and the smell of too much hair product. 

“I’m not sure even I can do all that much ‘investigation’ on my back, darling.” 

“I dunno, we can see how soundproof the rooms are, or,” here invisible hands slid under his ass and lifted him an inch above the Fury’s paintwork, “you can work upright if you want…”

“You’re awful.”

“Hey! It’s called the Hotel  _ Congress _ for a reason, it’d be rude not to!”

“Awful. Terrible. Ridiculous.” Hux muttered between kisses. “You’d better take me back to the hotel before I come to my senses.”

The old bench style front seat of the car would technically let Hux sit against Kylo while he drove, but he had strict opinions on road safety that the car already violated in a dozen ways, so they sat apart. Hopefully Kylo would calm down enough not to embarrass him on the way through the hotel lobby.

“Mothman saw your selfie, he thought your junk was a ‘human larva’.” Hux said, mostly to see Kylo’s horrified expression.

It didn’t disappoint. 

“But… Aed’s human…”

“Nope. Swan god.”

“Don’t they have cocks? I swear I remember some Greek thing… Was it Zeus? It’s usually Zeus…”

Hux pinched the bridge of his nose. “I assume they do, though I’m not exactly an expert…”

“Shocking.” 

“And I’ve never seen one,” Hux said loudly over Kylo’s commentary, “but ducks have corkscrew cocks so…”

“You’re _ not  _ an expert and yet you know that?!”

“It was in a pub quiz once!”

Kylo laughed. “Pervert!” 

“Says you!”

They travelled for a few minutes in companionable silence until Kylo finally asked, a little too casually, “So what  _ is _ the weirdest…”

“Hemipenes are the weirdest.” Hux replied instantly. “Only google it you want to lose all respect for me. Can we change the subject?”

Kylo shrugged. “Sure. What were you talking to Aed about?”

“Marriage.”

“Hey, you’re already married to me! No bigamy! Not with a cock-screw having Swanman anyway. Gerard Way, maybe…”

“Ha ha. He wants to marry Mothman. I said we’d help out.”

A warm hand settled briefly on his thigh and squeezed. “You’re such a romantic. We should open a really niche wedding chapel somewhere and start charging.”

“Eh, then it wouldn’t be fun,” Hux said, linking his fingers with Kylo’s for a moment before they pulled into the parking lot of the hotel. The weight of their hands over his pocket made something in his brain ping. “Oh. For fucks sake.”

“What?”

“That bastard never did give me my chapstick back.”

“You can't say I didn't warn you.”


End file.
